


I've got this music in my head; I've got this hole in my chest

by thought



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Autistic Character, Gen, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 21:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12328836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: Weapons don't bleed. It's a logical fallacy.





	I've got this music in my head; I've got this hole in my chest

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for implied child abuse, also Warren Kepler exists.  
> Title from [The Wren](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVTDyPYbJeI) which has for some reason become my background music for a lot of SI5 shenanigans.

{

const int you  
{

He looks at you and says "I am not in the business of making monsters, Dr. Maxwell. I've read Frankenstein, too, there's an art to keeping uncontrollable things. Do I look like I have that sort of time?"

"But weapons don't bleed," you say. "It's a logical fallacy."

He just smiles. "No, it's not. Now get moving."

You leave a trail of ones and zeros across the bathroom tile as you go. You can taste metal at the back of your throat.

}

int main()  
{

People don't touch you. It's an observation, not a complaint. A pat on the shoulder; /* "It's dislocated, you should be more careful, watching Star Trek is dangerous-- we believe in Jesus Christ in this household--" */ a friendly nudge; /* blood and lipgloss in your teeth and you know this is what happens to girls who kiss other girls under the bleachers but you wanted to know if maybe this would make you feel the way everyone says you're supposed to feel */ a hug; /*"Non-violent restraint techniques" "I think you mispronounced abusing children" -- you can't breathe you can't breathe you can't-- */.

Kepler touches Jacobi all the time. It's part of that unspoken thing between them, like magnets, like a high school dance, like adults mouthing things at each other over your head. You've always been the youngest, the strangest, the one that people leave out. You thought you were over it, but the way Kepler and Jacobi lean together in the front seat of the car once you've gotten out makes you feel like your skin is too small, like you shouldn't have a body, shouldn't take up this physical space in the scene. You want to be here without having to be here.

You tell yourself you're beyond these sort of things. You tell yourself what you see is unhealthy and pathetic and it isn't even something you would want, you know this. Truth be told, you still don't even know what 'it' is. You don't think they're fucking.

You spend so much time focusing on the Kepler and Jacobi dynamic that you miss what else is going on.

You're hunched over your laptop at the desk in the hotel room and Kepler stands behind you and puts his hands on your shoulders and you lean back into his touch automatically. It's Prague. It's 2014. Jacobi smiles knowingly at you when you come out of the bathroom after throwing up.

You say, "I never asked for this." The implication is there but Jacobi just stretches like a satisfied cat because he will ask and ask and ask with his hands and his mouth and thirteen sequential detonations-- bang, bang, bang, bang, civil war. You'd never even heard of the country until the mission briefing.

Three months later it's Moscow and you tell Kepler to go fuck himself and then you expect to die. That's ok. You went from ages eleven to thirteen expecting God to strike you down, lightning and brimstone in the school hallway. You're used to it, and at least this time you know you were in the right.

"I would have done the same thing," he says, instead of killing you. "It's that thing inside of our chests that always wants to push the envelope."

"It's that thing inside of you that means you're both fucking crazy," Jacobi says, from beneath a mountain of blankets. Kepler laughs. Jacobi says, "No, I'm serious, one of you is going to get us killed someday. Does Moscow have pizza delivery?"

Kepler says, "I'm sure you can google it," and then Kepler slams you face first against the cheap plaster of the wall and says "Don't ever disobey my orders like that again. Not on that scale." His voice is still calm. You spit blood from the place where your teeth cut your lip and maybe blood is thicker than water but it's no match for whisky and you understand for the first time that this, here, is the best thing you've ever been a part of.

You fit with Jacobi like puzzle pieces soldered together. It's terrifying. You've known since you turned eighteen in a police station back room with a stale cup of coffee and a restraining order on the desk that you do not need anyone. To have the entire core of your identity twist itself into a new shape after two months is unlike anything you could have imagined. There is suddenly a part of you that walks and talks on his own and could die on his own and then what would you be?

"We could have had this in 2005 if you'd ever attended the science and engineering mixers," Jacobi says. "I can't believe we were on the same campus for a year and I never ran into you."

"I still wasn't very good at being a person," you say. "I didn't speak to people. You can get away with that in undergrad."

There had been three university recruiters who came to your town. The woman who smiled at you with all her teeth and whispered in the hallway with your teacher-- "such a shame she'll never amount to anything with her condition, and such a pretty girl to boot." The second who had asked you a lot of questions about math and watched you with something hungry and pleased until you started talking about research and publishing and eventual salary goals. The third recruiter had barely spoken to you, just examined your test scores and gave you more and more complex logic and math puzzles to solve and then waved you out of the conference room while he talked fast into his cell phone. Your scholarship for MIT had come through the next month.

You spend Christmas sitting on the floor of a broom closet with Jacobi's knees pressed up against yours, the two of you playing math games in whispers to keep the time from dragging. It's a better Christmas than any you can remember.

There are whole chunks of your childhood that are just white space in your memory. Gone. Deleted. When you were six you had the devil in your chest. Your brother told you so when he found you in the janitor's closet at the end of the school day. The teacher called in a time out but then she didn't come back and she didn't come back and the dark and the quiet started to feel just as bad as the light and the noise. You never believed there was anything inside your chest but when you look at Kepler's hands around a man's throat you think maybe your brother was right after all.

2015 starts with Colonel Warren 'I survive on the blood of my enemies and expensive whisky' Kepler making french toast in your kitchen. You'd thought the noise had been Jacobi, or your landlord-- if the former you were going back to bed and if the latter you were going to break his arms. But you really don't know what to do with Kepler standing over a frying pan you didn't even know you owned.

You text Jacobi 'help I need your Kepler translation skills' and pour yourself a cup of the coffee that is fresh and hot and say "How was your Christmas, Sir?" because you still remember all the scripts for small talk you had to learn for the purposes of charming funders at academic conferences and trade shows.

"There are a couple less senators in the world this week," he says. "Have you ever been skiing?"

'seriously Daniel get here right fucking now he's going to shoot me in the head'

"Only cross country."

"Hmm. You should really go to the mountains and give downhill a shot."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Jacobi gets there in ten minutes. The french toast is slightly burned, which is far worse than if it had turned out perfect. Kepler drives you both to work afterward and nobody mentions it again.

A thing that not a lot of people understand is that English is your second language. Numbers are your first, easy like breathing, and you still remember the first time you sat down in front of a computer and it responded without you having to translate everything you wanted to say.

You know even after years spent learning how to play act at being a person, you still get it wrong sometimes. Talk too loudly, laugh too much, over-act the emotions one minute then forget to smile. People accuse you of being too blunt, but that's a feature, not a bug. Most of the world is stupid, and you don't see the point in humouring them.

Jacobi doesn't try nearly as hard to be a person as you do, and yet somehow he's usually more convincing. You resent him for it, a little bit. You'd never tell him, but it grates when someone is better than you at a thing.

There's a night, three months before the Hephaestus mission, two days after the clusterfuck that was Italy, and Kepler has already gone at Jacobi with words and hands and for once Jacobi decided that he was too fucking tired to play punching bag. So now you're alone in the hotel room and Kepler is standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a glass of whisky that he's not drinking. He's been there for an hour. It doesn't come as a surprise when he punches the glass.

You don't look up from your tablet. If Kepler is in the mood to punch mirrors you're not about to draw his attention to yourself.

Jacobi is downstairs at the bar. He's learned how to keep himself safe. Grew up learning how to bide his time, how to keep his mouth shut and his chin tucked down and a first aid kit in the back of the car. He knows when to walk away.

You think if Kepler turns on you now one of you will come out dead. You know how to take a hit and you know how to give it back. You can never let them know you're afraid, so just never be afraid. Calculate angles and trajectories and push as hard as you can. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. If Kepler looks at you right now you will both keep hitting your reflection until someone can't hit anymore.

So three months later, six, seven, eight months later you're in space. You're in space and Hera says "They're your family!" and it's like a knife under your jaw, a bright light shining down on you to highlight the way you are still taking up space in the scene, cluttering everything.

"They're your family."

"They're your family."

"They're your family."

Jacobi is looking at you and you replay the careful kindness in his voice when he'd realized what he was seeing. You can taste whisky at the back of your throat. /* Weapons don't bleed. Logical Fallacy. */

"They're your family."

No. They're not.

return-1;  
}

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway I love my terrible space daughter


End file.
